There’s nothing quite like the taste of real maple syrup. Drizzle it on waffles, pancakes, French toast, bacon and eggs, cornbread, your morning coffee…there’s just no wrong way to eat it.
So where does real maple syrup come from? Maple trees, of course!
Maples catch our attention every fall with their brilliant red, orange, and gold foliage. We all plan at least one mountain drive to enjoy them in September or October.
But the real maple miracle actually happens on the other end of the calendar, in early spring. In late January or early February, maple trees that have gone into hibernation for the winter begin to wake back up. Long before they bud and bloom and burst into leaf, the sap begins to run.
A tree's sap nourishes a tree like our blood nourishes us, carrying nutrients through the veins and arteries (called the xylem and phloem) of the tree. In the fall and winter, the sap hangs out in the roots, but as temperatures begin to rise during the day, the tree signals the sap that it is needed elsewhere, and it races back up the trunk to the branches, readying them to begin forming blossom and leaf buds before returning back to the roots overnight.
The tapping process has changed slightly since early British colonists learned it from Native Americans. Now, a plastic tap into a hole on the south side of a tree, about knee-high and above a root. The tap is then connected to a network of plastic tubing that runs through the forest (known to syrup producers as the "sugar bush") down to a collection tank in a sugar shack, where it can be boiled....and boiled and boiled (40 gallons of sap typically boils down to only 1 gallon of syrup).
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But where do the maple trees that make the sap come from? Canada, of course. Vermont, of course. And....West Virginia? Of course!
Yes, believe it or not, right here in wild, wonderful West Virginia, there are over 50 maple farms that produce gallons of the liquid gold every spring.
And many of them allow you to visit their sugar shacks to learn about the process of making maple syrup, sample some tasty maple treats, and purchase some of your very own local tree juice. Some of them may even offer syrup from other trees (black walnut and shagbark hickory are two of the more popular alternatives).
But to make visiting these farms even easier and more fun, the West Virginia Maple Syrup Producers Association has scheduled two special Mountain State Maple Days in the next few weeks: one on February 22 and one on March 21.
On these days, syrup producers across the state will be hosting extra special events, tours, tastings, and sales at their farms, and participating restaurants will be serving up an array of maple themed dishes.
To learn more about the Mountain State Maple Days and locate a participating maple farm near you, visit the Mountain State Maple Syrup Producers Association website. Their website also has information about all of the local maple farms in case you can’t make any of the Mountain State Maple events.
Have you ever tapped a maple tree? You don’t have to own acres of sugar bush to try it – we tap a tree or two from our back yard every spring, although we usually just end up drinking the sap water rather than making syrup. Just in case we decide to boil it down this year, though…what’s your favorite way to eat maple syrup? Let us know so we can test it out!
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